


Love Letters From a Doomed Timeline

by placentalmammal



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-24
Updated: 2013-05-24
Packaged: 2017-12-12 21:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/816316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placentalmammal/pseuds/placentalmammal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The diary is pink and girly with a lock and key, the sort you'd buy for your niece or younger sister. The entries are undated and unordered scattered throughout the book at random. There's a name written on the inside cover, Rose Lalonde, and this is what it says.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Letters From a Doomed Timeline

_The meteor is deserted when John and Jade arrive. Everything is neat and orderly and covered with a thick layer of dust. There’s no sign of violence, no sign of life. It’s as though everyone up and left, locking the door and leaving the key under the mat. Eerie is the only word for it._

_They explore the wide halls and twisting staircases of the meteor base. There’s nothing there but dust and echoes, and every door leads to more halls, more stairs, more empty. There is one locked door, but they bypass it, intending to come back later for a more thorough investigation. The goal now is to find the others, find their friends._

_They end up in a library. The books are on the shelves and heaped in orderly piles. The only exception is a single book laying out on the large central table, a book with “My Diary” written on it in gold script._

_The diary is pink and girly with a lock and key, the sort you'd buy for your niece or younger sister. The key is sitting neatly on the cover, and Jade opens it, not knowing what to expect. The entries are undated and unordered scattered throughout the book at random. There's a name written on the inside cover, Rose Lalonde, and this is what it says._

 

Dave died.

That was when I knew things had gone wrong.

I don't claim to be good at what I do, but I know that in the alpha timeline, Dave is alive. I never told him so, because I didn't think he would take it as the compliment I intended it to be. To him, it would just confirm that all those other Daves, the dead ones, had died or would die for no reason at all.

I never told him, and now I never will. I had my chance, and I lost it. I lost him, along with my chance of making it to the new session.

There are other Roses out there, somewhere in paradox space, and I know that at least one will make it to the new session along with her brother, Dave. One will, I will not.

I am doomed to this offshoot timeline. From what I've read, the doomed timelines have a way of resolving themselves. Something happens to tie off loose ends, to prevent the heroes of uncounted alternate sessions from circling the drain in perpetuity.

I wonder.

 

I've been reading. Trying to learn more about the mechanics of the game, specifically of doomed and offshoot timelines. All I've found so far is information about dream bubbles, which Kanaya says were created by Feferi, one of the trolls I didn't get to meet. Kan doesn't like to talk about the others, so I won't mention it again, but I would have liked very much to have met Feferi.

 

I haven't been sleeping lately. I keep having ~~nightmares~~ visions about our futures in this timeline. I see an immense spiral, radiating outward from a central point. A nautilus shell made of pain and outrage.

 

I've been thinking. 

Before he died, Dave and I had a conversation about timelines and offshoots and loops. He said that time branches whenever a decision is made. He described it like a coin toss- two separate timelines are created, one where the coin landed heads, the other where it landed tails. His job, in essence, is to ensure that the outcome is favorable (my words, not his).

But I've also been studying probability. Flipping a coin once creates two scenarios. Twice, four. Three times is eight, four times is sixteen. And just because an outcome isn't favorable, doesn't mean it ceases to exist. Even if there were only four "tosses," that means there are fifteen outcomes aside from the favorable one-fifteen timelines where we failed.

Dave said that every action is a coin toss. Every decision we make creates a new offshoot timeline.

There are infinitely many copies of us in infinitely many doomed timelines scattered across paradox space, and that number increases every second.

 

Kanaya is dead.

 

I'm so sorry.

 

I didn't go to the funeral. I couldn't. They'd all be looking at me, and I don't know what they want. I think they want me to cry, but I can't.

 

It was an accident. There's nothing any of us could have done to prevent it. That's what Karkat keeps saying over and over. I think he might be coping worse than I am. I've got the books, my research. He's got a string of failed relationships, a meteor full of dead friends, and nothing to do but brood.

 

I've been sleeping better. I've started having a little night-cap before bed, it's really helping me get through the night.

I still have the dreams, but they're not so intense now. I'm still seeing the shell every time I close my eyes, but it's not as overwhelming as it used to be.

 

I dont understand. If this is a doomed timeline, shouldn't we be dead by now? All of us, not just Dave and Kan and the Mayor? Its not fair, Terezi and me hardly talk.

 

I thought we were supposed to be dream bubbles bu now. I wonder. Maybe I was wrong, and the alpha timelien is everyone is dead.

 

Terezi says she's been having the same dreams, about shells, bit she calls them calcite crustacean rocks. But its the same, the spiral and the screamng. There didnt used to be screaming, but I didn't want to tell her my dreams are getting wors.

 

I cant sleep even with the bightcap. Terezis been keeping me together, I think I might have gone insane w/o jer.

 

I kiossd Terezi. I hope Karkat doesnt fond out ,he can't find Gamzee and he's freaking out. I don't ant him mad at me.

 

I don't understand why were qll still alive. It jist doesn't make sense to me: the nifhtmares are getting worse and worse every ine I close mt eyes but weer all still here still sifering and I dint know how much longer I can stanf to see them all suffer

Yhe booze foes nothing but I can't stip drinking it

 

I think I finally underseand. 

We've been seeing the nautilus sheel, a perfect wpiral, the golden tatio. Its got tobe cebtered on a point. Hats why wre all still here there's no focua for anything it sinply is.

If I were to procide a focus for this misery, a point for it to cirjle qround I xould end it onde and for all

 

O think I know what I have to do

 

O said earlier that I though that Dave's debth was a portent of a doomed timeline, I realizr now that I was incorect. Death and pain dont bring about doomed timelines, it's the other way sround

if the coin comes up heads when it shoud have been tails, the universe punishes us by killing our friends. Its a cold, dark world, fraught with more irony than even Strider oculd understand because the right choices are never obvious-if hhey were, we wohdk have win a long time agi

the roght choices usually seem line all the wong ones and th things that wre supposed to help make evrything worse. 

I'm qll alone now and god I miss them so much

 

_In the meteor, there are no bodies and one locked door. Jade and John never attempt to open it._


End file.
